Is your organization ready for change?

Excerpt

Think about whether your organization is ready for change. My friend Beth Kanter says the answer’s probably yes if people already share knowledge and ideas, respect people at all levels, and can deal with messiness. And it’s probably no if workers are not online, management is obsessively controlling, and everything requires central approval. When you’re faced with a no, resign yourself to small project or, better still, find yourself another organization to work with.

If your objective is to tweak the learnscape of the entire enterprise, it’s vital to grapple with corporate culture. What does the organizational feel like? What are the norms? How committed is the organization to change? Where are we starting? What’s the problem? What do we need to change?

You need to assess this for yourself, and you’ll need evidence to present to others. It’s not easy for an organization to see what’s in the mirror. Here are a few ways to sharpen the picture:

* Take the Organizational Learning Litmus Test
* Audit your learning culture
* Pick some pictures
* Survey the pulse
* Put the organization on the couch

(Sorry, the links are in the Learnscaping Cloud, available only to subscribers to the un-book.)

If you’ve known the organization long enough, contemplate the trajectory of its culture. Where are you along the organizational life cycle?